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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. Which level of a house is protected with strong beams and rafters, and, states the author, has darkness that disappears in daylight?
(a) The attic.
(b) The cellar.
(c) Every level.
(d) The main living area.

2. Central to the argument in "The House, from Cellar to Garret . . .," which statement is most indicative of cellar fears?
(a) Cellar fears may be reasoned away.
(b) Cellar fears indicate childhood trauma.
(c) Cellar fears take longer to fade, and remain tentative and unknown.
(d) Cellar fears precede mental illness.

3. What romantic notion does Bachelard dispute?
(a) The lover's nest.
(b) The magic of rainbows.
(c) The refuge of the forest.
(d) Poetic imagery.

4. Who noted that inside seems cozier when the outside weather is severe?
(a) Baudelaire.
(b) Bachelard.
(c) Bosco.
(d) Rilke.

5. Topo-analysis is useful for studying what?
(a) The structure of a poem.
(b) The structure of a house.
(c) Psychoanalysis.
(d) Isolated poetic images.

6. For psychoanalysts, what do conflicted locks and keys in dreams symbolize?
(a) Sexual intimacy.
(b) Repression.
(c) New discoveries.
(d) Temptations.

7. What is a commitment of the soul according to the author?
(a) Psychoanalysis.
(b) Poetry.
(c) Death.
(d) Shelter.

8. Poetry stimulates what sort of response in the reader in the opinion of Bachelard?
(a) A forgotten image.
(b) Appreciation for rhymes.
(c) Rhythmic thoughts.
(d) Fear of isolation.

9. Poetic imagery is real, according to Bachelard, even though it is not subject to what?
(a) Rules of household order.
(b) Rules of the marketplace.
(c) Rules of grammar.
(d) Rules of logic.

10. Childhood is held motionless, states Bachelard, by dreaming of what?
(a) The phenomenology of motherhood.
(b) Nursery rhymes.
(c) The house where one was born.
(d) Stick-figure drawings.

11. In the works of Edgar Allan Poe, murder and mayhem usually occur where?
(a) In criminal cellars.
(b) In childhood homes.
(c) In the imagination.
(d) In dark attics.

12. What does a metaphor present?
(a) A tangible object as an intangible notion that is otherwise difficult to express.
(b) An intangible object as a tangible notion that is otherwise difficult to express.
(c) A tangible object described in full detail.
(d) An intangible object described in full detail.

13. Why does Bachelard disagree with Bergson's metaphor of drawers to describe the human brain?
(a) He wonders how objects would be retrieved from the drawers.
(b) A chest of drawers is finite, while the brain's capacity is infinite.
(c) Items get lost in drawers.
(d) He wonders how reason determines which drawer should contain each new object.

14. What does Bachelard believe is an antidote for claustrophobia?
(a) Spending time away from one's house.
(b) Light colors.
(c) Stairways.
(d) Dynamic houses that open back out to the universe.

15. What is a primal image symbolic of a man keeping vigil according to Bachelard?
(a) A childhood home.
(b) A man dreaming of poetic imagery.
(c) A hermit's hut.
(d) A vacant house.

Short Answer Questions

1. Rilke wrote that storms seem more aggressive and hostile where?

2. The author theorizes that an unhappy child will draw what sort of a house?

3. The philosopher Minkowski conducted an analysis of what?

4. A phenomenologist considers what regarding a house?

5. Bachelard spent the majority of his career in what occupation?

(see the answer keys)

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